# Quoted-Printable Decoder

> Decode quoted-printable (MIME) email text, including =XX escapes and soft line breaks.

- Page: https://decoder.tools/quoted-printable-decoder
- Category: Data, Radix & String
- Status: live, runs in the browser
- Last reviewed: 2026-10-23

A quoted-printable decoder turns `=XX` escape sequences back into the bytes they stand for, and removes the soft line breaks that email software inserts to keep lines short.

## Example

```text Input
Caf=C3=A9 au lait =E2=80=93 =E2=82=AC3.50
```

```text Output
Café au lait – €3.50
```

`=C3=A9` is the two UTF-8 bytes of `é`, `=E2=80=93` is an en dash and `=E2=82=AC` is the euro sign.

## What is quoted-printable?

Quoted-printable is a MIME content transfer encoding defined in RFC 2045. Email was designed for 7-bit ASCII with short lines, so any byte that isn't plain printable ASCII has to be escaped. Quoted-printable writes such a byte as `=` followed by two hex digits. Everything else is left alone, so mostly-English text stays readable even before decoding. That is the main difference from Base64, which makes the whole body unreadable.

Lines are limited to 76 characters. To wrap a long line without changing the content, the encoder ends it with a lone `=`, called a soft line break. The decoder joins those lines back together.

You will meet quoted-printable in raw email source (`Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable`), in `.eml` files and in mail server logs. A related format, the "Q" encoding of RFC 2047, appears in headers as `=?UTF-8?Q?Caf=C3=A9?=`. Inside the `?Q?` part, `_` stands for a space.

## How to use the quoted-printable decoder

1. Paste the encoded body, including any lines ending in `=`.
2. Read the decoded text.
3. For an encoded header like `=?UTF-8?Q?…?=`, paste only the part between `?Q?` and `?=`, and replace `_` with spaces.

## Decode quoted-printable in code

```python Python
import quopri

print(quopri.decodestring("Caf=C3=A9 au lait =E2=80=93 =E2=82=AC3.50").decode("utf-8"))
```

## Quoted-printable at a glance

| | |
|---|---|
| Specification | RFC 2045 (MIME), headers in RFC 2047 |
| Escape format | `=` plus two hex digits, for example `=3D` for `=` |
| Soft line break | `=` at the end of a line |
| Maximum line length | 76 characters |

## FAQ

### Why is there an = at the end of lines in my email?

That is a soft line break. The encoder wraps long lines at 76 characters and marks each wrap with `=` so the decoder knows to join the lines back together.

### What does =3D mean?

It is an escaped equals sign. Because `=` starts every escape, a literal `=` in the original text has to be written as `=3D`.

### Quoted-printable or Base64: how does email choose?

Mail software usually picks quoted-printable for text that is mostly ASCII, because it stays readable and small, and Base64 for binary attachments or text that is mostly non-ASCII.